I’ve Seen This Movie Before: What 50 Years of Technology Taught Me About AI

I remember seeing my first calculator in King’s department store. I looked at it and thought, “Now I can finally do math.” That probably sounds quaint today. But at the time, a calculator felt extraordinary. Something I struggled to do suddenly became easier because a machine could handle part of the process for me. Years later, I sat down at an Apple computer and used a word processor for the first time. My reaction was almost identical: “Now I don’t have to use my typewriter. I can finally write my novel.” I wasn't worried that the computer would replace writers. I was fascinated that technology had removed another barrier between an idea and its execution. I've been watching that happen my entire adult life. And now it's happening again. Only this time, the technology is artificial intelligence. From Typewriters to Taiwan My career didn't begin in technology. I've been an entrepreneur most of my life. At twelve, I had a lawn-mowing business with 25 lawns. Later came fashion, product design, manufacturing and international business. In 1992, while in the middle of my MBA, I became a co-founder of an Asian business. For the next several years, I worked internationally in production and design. That's when another machine changed my world: the fax machine. International manufacturing depended on documents. Shipping documents. Customs documents. Purchase orders. Corrections. When something was wrong with a shipment in Taiwan, time mattered. Suddenly we could correct a document in America, fax it across the Pacific and potentially clear customs the same day. I remember thinking, “Now this changes things.” Then email arrived. The revolutionary fax machine suddenly seemed primitive. Instead of feeding thermal paper through a machine, we could attach shipping documents and transmit them virtually instantaneously. I've even used an early satellite phone when airtime cost roughly $50 a minute. You learned to make your point quickly. I have lived through the calculator, personal computer, word processor, fax machine, email, satellite communications, Internet, search engine, smartphone, social media and now generative AI. I've learned not to become too attached to the tool. The tool will change. What matters is recognizing what the new tool makes possible. Experience Didn't Suddenly Become Obsolete After leaving the Asian business, I moved to New York and spent the period from 1998 to 2003 restructuring two corporations. In 2005, I organized MC Jensen & Associates LLC as an advertising consulting firm focused on reorganizing and restructuring companies. That business remains active today, although it has evolved into a creative agency increasingly focused on developing and branding entities. In 2017, I founded Sapien Designs as our work moved further into digital design, websites, search and eventually the relationship between brands and artificial intelligence. Now, at 62, I'm watching executives my age confront AI. And I recognize the look. They feel as though something has passed them by. It hasn't. If you're 45, 55, 65 or 70 and have spent decades mastering an industry, AI hasn't erased that experience. It may have just made your experience considerably more valuable. AI Doesn't Have Your 30 Years Think about what an experienced executive actually possesses. You know why a deal that looked brilliant failed. You can walk through a manufacturing facility and sense where money is being lost. You know which customer complaint matters and which one doesn't. You've hired the wrong person. You've hired the right person. You've lived through recessions, technological changes, competitors, bad partnerships and occasionally your own bad decisions. AI doesn't replace any of that. What it can do is help you interrogate, organize and execute against what you already know. That's an enormous distinction. Put AI Between Experience and Execution I think many executives are approaching AI backward. They're asking: “What can AI do that I can't?” I'd ask: “What can AI help me do with what I already know?” Use it to challenge a strategy before presenting it to your board. Give it competing scenarios and force yourself to defend your assumptions. Use it to turn a nonlinear collection of ideas into an organized operating plan. Analyze customer feedback. Explore a market. Pressure-test positioning. Prepare for a difficult meeting. Examine the implications of a decision from five different perspectives. Have it summarize information so you can spend your time deciding what the information means. That's executive leverage. AI can dramatically compress the distance between thought and execution. But judgment remains yours. And seasoned executives have a lot of judgment. Leadership Is Still Leadership Every technological revolution creates a period when people confuse mastery of the new tool with mastery of the underlying discipline. Knowing how to operate AI doesn't make someone a strategist any more than knowing Excel makes someone a CFO. Leadership still requires judgment. Context. Pattern recognition. Accountability. Empathy. Timing. And the ability to connect dots that don't appear related until somebody connects them. AI doesn't diminish those qualities. It amplifies them. I've spent more than five decades watching machines remove friction from human capability. The calculator didn't eliminate mathematics. The word processor didn't eliminate writers. Email didn't eliminate international business. And AI isn't going to eliminate experienced executives. But executives who learn to combine their experience with AI will operate differently from those who don't. They'll investigate faster. They'll see more alternatives. They'll communicate more clearly. They'll execute ideas faster. Most importantly, they'll have more time for the thing technology still cannot give them: experience. I've seen this movie before. The technology changes. The opportunity is learning what to do with it. And once again, I find myself thinking: Now look at what I can do!